The Airbus H175M helicopter on display at the Royal International Air Tattoo, RAF Fairford (Breaking Defence)
RIAT 2023 – The UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) has decided to reduce the number of aircraft to be procured under the £1 billion ($1.3 billion) New Medium Helicopter (NMH) program to to a maximum of 35 units, an industry official said. Breaking the defense today.
An upper limit of 44 aircraft had originally been set for November 2021, but funding issues have led to a much lower target.
“They have done it [MoD] he said between 25 and 35 [aircraft]look at what you can do in the industry,” Lenny Brown, managing director of Airbus Helicopters UK, said in an interview at the Royal International Air Tattoo. “It’s kind of a best effort with the funding available.”
The procurement calls for the replacement of Puma helicopters and a number of smaller rotary fleets, including Bell 212s, Bell 412s and AS365 Dauphins, but delays have led to an invitation to trade (ITN) phase, initially scheduled for the first quarter of 2023, which has been pushed to later this year. The new phase, which will define all the requirements and costs, will only happen “at the earliest” in September of this year, Brown added.
The UK also needs to confirm when a production contract or NMH service entry date will occur.
Brown outlined a series of initial requirements based on “capability, performance and engineering support”, however, the Ministry of Defense has outlined to industry.
“We haven’t seen the training requirements and there are a lot of different chapters that are still to come, but the Ministry of Defense has been as good as they can be in giving us trickle down information,” he added.
The Ministry of Defense has also “instructed” competitors to use a range of defense assistance kits to prepare for any testing and compliance required once a production selection of aircraft has been made, it said . The UK Ministry of Defense did not immediately respond to an after-hours request for comment on its new medium helicopter plans.
If selected, Airbus plans to set up an H175M helicopter production line in Broughton, Wales, where it currently makes A380 commercial jet wings, but faces competition from Leonardo UK, which offers AW149 helicopters and the S -70M Black Hawk from Lockheed Martin.
Airbus hopes a deal with the UK could pave the way for H175M export sales, with a market of around 500 “platforms in specific countries” of interest, according to Brown.
“There are already signs of demand coming from some of them,” he explained, without mentioning individual nations.
The UK was also expected to retire the Puma fleet by 2025, leaving the industry potentially facing a compressed NMH production timetable, although Air Chief Marshal Richard Knighton, head of state Air Force One told lawmakers in May that an extension to 2027 or 2028 could be done.
Brown expressed few concerns about potential changes to production timelines.
“All we have to do is push the button [at Broughton] and we can immediately acquire templates and tools”, he explained. “The basic systems and training are in place, so it won’t take long to set up production and start cranking.”
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